A new species
by Sirius333
Summary: This is probably better left to the forums, but nobody ever reads those. A new race of abhumans emerges, one that brings the disposability of the Imperial Guard to a whole new level. Absolutely bleeds grimdark and tragedy.
1. Chapter 1

Skall: Skaven meets ratling meets Hrud.

So I had this idea. This horrible... _horrible_ idea.

You ever meet that guy who's a complete nihilist, who thinks that all human beings are nothing but some malign blight upon the earth, no better than sentient viruses?

You ever think about what would happen if you made an entire race of those guys, and they just happened to epitomize everything they themselves said about the human race? Then, what would happen if you went beyond that, and you think about what it would be like to turn this idea _up to 11_?

Congratulations. You've just met the Skall.

It started when some ratling twists fled into the bilge pipes of a supercarrier shortly after the Horus Heresy. They were afraid. They knew the God-Emperor. They knew his divine light. But they didn't want to die, to be hunted down like vermin. They still wanted to serve. So the fled into the dark, still worshipping the icons they knew, despite their mutations. They kept the faith alive, feeding on the vermin of the bilge tunnels to survive.

Then they began to change. They evolved.

Millennium later, the Skall emerge from an unkown planet. They are small things that enjoy the dark, fleeing the light wherever they find it. They war among themselves. Why do they war? Not for purposes of faith. Not because of socioeconomic differences, nor political gain or ideological reasons. In fact, the entire species agrees on pretty much everything. So why the wars?

 _Because there are too damn many of them._ They breed like wildfire, and they have no way of controlling it. Each one is a hermaphroditic breeding machine, and wherever a skall goes, it plants it's eggs whether it wants to or not. The eggs hatch into larvea, the larva grow into skall. The Skall have found no way to control this, because every day is a fight for precious resources. Every skall is too busy to do anything but secure meager crumbs of food to keep from starving, secure pitiful mouthfuls of water to slake their endless thirst, and killing their brethren to keep from being killed first.

The wars are simple things of population control, because without them the Skall would outgrow their resources and die. The skall are all too painfully aware of this. They make friends knowing that they may have to stab that friend tomorrow. They treasure friendship while it lasts before it is broken by inevitable betrayal. Each skall owns only what he can keep for himself. In the mind of the Skall, if you can't hold on to an item, then you don't deserve to have it. There are no property rights. There are no laws. There is only survival.

But all Skall know about what they had been once. They know that they weren't always like this. They served an Emperor who commanded from a Golden Throne. They sing of these lost times. They speak of them reverently. Indeed, the great unifying factor in the anarchic Skall society is they had holy purpose before their descent into depravity, their society had once been a thing of glory, a thing of greatness.

Obviously, it was only a matter of time before somebody happened upon these wayward abhumans. They saw their legends, saw their artifacts. They looked upon the crashed Imperial Carrier that was the birth of the Skall race, and they quickly deduced what had happened. And they saw potential.

Fast forward again. The skall now live in the underhives of every imperial city, they infest the bilge tunnels of every imperial ship. Their symbiotic relationship with the imperium is a strange one: They fight for the imperium, but they also invite the imperium to try and kill them off whenever their numbers swell out of control.

For the Skall, the Great Crusade never ended, nor will it ever, for the Skall procreate too rapidly for peace to exist. Billions of skall are dumped into crusades. More than anything, this is to rid the imperium of the Skall themselves, who would consume every last scrap of food and drink every drop of water in the imperium if it were otherwise.

The Skall know that if the Imperium wins, then the next step is a war between them and the rest of the Humanity, for only one can survive. And they dearly hope the imperium wins that engagement, for the Skall have lingered too long after their fall from grace. They serve now as they were always intended to serve: to secure humanities dominance over the stars. Tomorrow, their service will end when the Imperium dies and the Skall die with it, or when the imperium prevails and the skall must be wiped out. Either way, they will serve, as they ever have.

 **APPEARANCE:**  
To the Skall, their own appearance is a shame and a disgrace to humanities blessed form, and they keep themselves covered whenever they may. But caught without a robe, and one will behold a diminutive, three-eyed creature. They were once ratlings, but no longer. An extra eye has grown on the right side of their face above the traditional one. Their skin is oily black, and what remains of their hair comes in segmented strings, like an insect's antenna . Their mouths are now filled with rows upon rows of jagged teeth, much like that of a tiger shark. Their tongues are proboscis, as if they had replaced the organ with a lamprey eel. Their arms and backs are covered in quills of crystalized toxins, natural depositories for poisonous elements that the Skall biology cannot break down and consume otherwise.

 **TECH:**  
The skall are mostly scavengers of Rak'Gol-level tech. They still utilize Nuclear Fission reactors, and have developed a specialize splinter rifle that fires the quills that the Skall naturally produce. More fluff needed on their tech.

 **Note:** They're not gonna stop fighting for self-preservation...ever. So they'll invite Space Marines to purge the hives, but the space marines really aught to be carefull doing so. Get isolated from the rest of your unit and you're suddenly swarmed by disgusting little creatures intent on eating you. The Imperium and the Skall would have to go to war eventually, it's just a matter of when. No Skall would ever say "Please, Purge me!" and offer himself for death. Rather, he would say "Come TRY to purge me!" Then he would start running. Then he would lay an ambush. And you better hope you win, because even if he's your best friend, he knows it's you or him. And he's determined not to let it be him.


	2. Lean times

**Friends forever; through hardship and plenty**

The ship shuddered. The Rak'Gols had come out behind the veil of dust and grit that defied all sensor sweeps, and now pounded at the Imperial Destroyer. Giv stumbled as another series of explosions rocked the ship.

He felt like his head was going to explode as klaxons wailed, deafening to his finely tuned ears. Even the "dim" lighting of the emergency lumens burned his eyes. He picked himelf up, and dashed ahead, scrabbling to get to his station. A large form ran around the corner and tripped over Giv's diminutive meter tall form, kicking him in the face as it did so. He felt several of his jagged teeth dig into his upper lip. He stood, cursing, looking for his splinter rifle.

"Giv! Is that you?" The human questioned. Jeremy. It's name was Jeremy, Giv remembered. They had served for several years together against a choas incursion. Fortunate, fortunate. He had quantified the human as a valuable resource, a good fighter, and a fine source of entertainment when things were dull.

"Yesyesrak'golboardingtheyboardnowmustfightmustfight!" he said. No time, no time for this.

"Yeah, yeah! Let's to the Armory, we need weapons!"

"Noweaponnoweapon? Why? WHY!?" Giv cursed him for his stupidity. The first rule of survival was to keep what you needed with you, at all times. To lock valuables, especially weapons, in a separate room? Far away? Insanity. If you had to break down your weapon and stash it, fine. But the least you could do was stash it somewhere close.

"It's fucking regs-" Jeremy started. No time.

"-yesyes! Weaponsgetnow! Nownow! Go!"

They ran, passing other crew members as they went. The ship was total pandemonium. Giv ditched trying to dodge all the human legs and simply jumped aboard Jeremies back. It was quite possible that Jeremy would have to visit a medicae later to disinfect the scratches. Humans were frail like that, falling ill at the slightest infection.

There was a deafening BANG, and Giv's head felt it would burst as overpressure pummeled his ears and the lights flickered. An emergency bulkhead came down in front of them. Jeremy skidded to a halt.

"Backbackback!"

"Fucking Giv-"

"-back-"

"-yeah! I got it! I'm going!"

And go he did.

Right. Bulkhead. Right again. Another bulkhead, with sounds of fighting behind it. Back track, left, straight, right, left.

Giv disembarked to let Jeremy climb an escape ladder, and followed after him. Both sides of the hall were cut off with yet more emergency bulkheads.

"Dammit! They've cut everything off!"

They were most likely trying to secure the Rak'gol, to isolate them into smaller pockets by throwing down containment barriers wherever they surfaced. But that also meant that the two were trapped. They went back, double checking that there were no exits. Sure enough, they ran straight into another barrier. On the plus side, this meant that the Rak'gol would have to spend time cutting through door after door as the human defenders rallied and prepared.

On the other hand, if a Rak'gol party began cutting through this section...well, they only had giv's pitiful splinter rifle between them. Skall toxin was enough to hurt most creatures, but the emphasis was on _most._ It would corrode veins as it traveled through them, literally eating a target from the inside out. Despite that, Rak'Gol had a reputation for surviving horribly irradiated environments, and were known for their infernal fortitude. What if it didn't hurt them? And even if it did, the rifle wasn't strong enough to get through carapace armor...if they met elites, they were done with.

The ship shuddered. The lights went out, and the Klaxons were silenced.

"That's not good."

Not good was an understatement. It meant that they were aboard a dead ship. Even if their sister ships were still fighting, it would almost certainly be days or possibly weeks before the two were rescued.

Giv sat. This meant...

..No food... No water... Possibly no Oxygen...

Two people. No sustenance.

This meant lean times. Giv wasn't sure if Jeremy understood it, understood what lean times meant. Giv contemplated...

Jeremy had been a worthy friend. They had been through much together. Giv would wait a few hours before killing and eating him. Jeremy deserved that much. In the mean time, he would spend those hours remembering all the time times they had saved each other. Jeremy had even killed a bloodletter once. Had received a ribbon of honor for his courage. Had saved many Skall, letting them enjoy times of plenty, times of full stomachs and times of no worry. Above all, the Skall knew and appreciated those times.

He was contemplating a particularly humerous occasion when Jeremy had caught fire once. One of the portable stoves had suffered a catastrophic failure, spilling flaming prometheum everywhere. Jeremy had come forward with a blanket, trying to put the fire out. In the attempt, his hair came alight. Several of the skall had written him a citation of valorous service, turning it in to the commissar for review. It, of course, had been a joke. No guardsmen would ever get a promotion for " _Bravely rushing into combat against the heretical forces contained within the stove which threatened to engulf the imperium"._

A skittering interrupted his thoughts. It came towards him from Jeremy's direction.

"Whatwhat? Whatisit?" His hands swept the floor, searching for the object.

Jeremies voice came across the room just as Giv's hand wrapped around the knife's handle. "It's my bayonet, giv. Go for the throat. Poison sounds like a really shitty way to go. I'd rather have my throat slit." The human's voice sounded strained.

Giv fought to keep his voice slow and measured. Humans always talked so slowly, and he wanted Jeremy to understand this.

"Am so sorry. Sorry sorry. Good times were had. Jeremy was a good friend. Brave soldier. Brave man. Ave Imperitor."

 **Epilogue:  
** The light fusion cutter hurt his eyes. He was happy. So very happy. He had been afraid he would be reduced to eating his own larvae. Eating the larvae of other skall could be done in lean times, but eating ones own larvae would induce insanity eventually. A square hole of light appeared, and twentysome insects made their escape. Somebody coughed.

"Dear emperor, what is that _stench!?"_ There was a retching sound, followed by splashing. Giv held his position for a moment, surveying the pile of broken bones that had once been a friend. He rose to his feet, and handed the rescue team a pair of dog tags. He then checked his belt, where a lock of hair had been fashioned into a lanyard, securing a small crudely fashioned pouch containing some fingernails.

Times of plenty were upon Giv again. But he would remember the lean times, and those who didn't make it through them.


End file.
